Stowe Boyd

Stowe Boyd (born 24 September1953) is an information technologist who focuses on real-time collaboration tools. He is widely credited with coining the terms advisory capital and social tools. He coined the term 'hashtag' in 2007.

Publicy says that each self exists in a particular social context, and all such contracts are independent. (…) It’s as if we are gaining the ability to see into the ultraviolet and infrared ends of the social spectrum when we are online, and in some contexts we are dropping out yellows or reds. To those tied to the visible color spectrum we are habituated to, this new sort of vision will be 'irreal.' But ultraviolet has always existed: we just couldn't see it before. (…) This will be a fracturing of the premises of privacy, and a slow rejection of the metaphors of shared space. The principles of publicy are derived from the intersection of infinite publics and our shared experience of time online, through media like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. The innate capability we have to shift in a heartbeat from a given public, and our corresponding persona, to another, is now being accelerated by streaming social tools. This will be the decade when publicy displaces privacy, online and off.

...there is nothing like a 'private home' online, because we don't sleep there, and we don't need toilets or showers there. So a lot of the privacy issues in the real world -- like what the police can seize without a warrant, or whether you have to admit your identity when asked -- don't really play online. Online privacy is seldom about private property, but about access to information.